Guidelines for reviewers

General points

Reviews should be concrete, constructive, and considerate. Strengths as well as weaknesses of manuscripts should be described. Any general criticism you make should be substantiated with a concrete example or two.

Specific points

Other than the obvious things that reviewers deal with (e.g., methodological weaknesses, inappropriate statistics, inconclusive results, failures to cite relevant literature), it would be helpful if your review could do the following (as appropriate):

Provide a summary. A summary can help the editor and authors interpret the basis for your criticisms.

Evaluate the motivation for the research and how the results advance knowledge. The introduction and discussion must make it clear exactly how the research advances our knowledge in an empirical, theoretical, and/or methodological domain. If you state that the authors have failed to cite relevant work, please give as complete a citation as possible of the missing papers; explain briefly why you think they are relevant.

If needed, suggest better formats for presenting results and statistics. As is appropriate, suggest alternative ways to design tables or figures to better highlight the major findings, or to conduct more appropriate analyses. If the author is making a claim based on a failure to reject the null hypothesis, be concerned about statistical power.

Evaluate the quality of the writing. Identify ambiguities in writing that might cause confusion to readers of the journal but might not be caught by a copy editor especially when the authors are describing procedures and results from the literature or are stating their theoretical interpretation of the data. If you believe that the organization of the paper needs improvement, give explicit suggestions for how to accomplish this.

Indicate the relative importance of your criticisms. Divide your points into those that are major (essential that the authors address in a revision) and minor (those that they might consider incorporating).

Thank you for your assistance in providing us with a high quality review. Your participation as a reviewer is critical to the success of Nicotine & Tobacco Research.